58
army; and a majority in the Coldstream having be-
come vacant, he was induced to purchase it, by which
he obtained the rank of a full colonel in the service,
and the ultimate command of the regiment.
From the foregoing account it could scarcely be
expected that Colonel Mackinnon should also obtain
distinction in authorship. Entering the army at
the raw age of fourteen, when a stripling's education
is still imperfect, and returning to domestic life at a
period when few are willing to resume their half-
conned lessons, and become schoolboys anew, we
are apt to ask, how and where he could have acquired
those capacities that would enable him to produce a
well-written book? But this, by no means the
easiest or least glorious of his achievements, he has
certainly accomplished. Soon after the accession of
William IV. his majesty was desirous that a full
history of the Coldstream Guards should be written,
and he selected no other than the gallant colonel of
the regiment to be its historian. Such a choice, and
the able manner in which it was fulfilled, show that
Mackinnon must have possessed higher qualities than
those of a mere swordier however brave, and that he
must have cultivated them with much careful appli-
cation after his final return to England. For this,
indeed, if nothing more than recreation had been his
motive, there was an especial inducement, arising
from his wound received at Waterloo, by which he
was prevented from more active enjoyments. Al-
though such a task required no small amount of
historical and antiquarian research, the origin of the
Coldstreams dating so far back as the year 1650, he
ably discharged it by his work in two volumes,
entitled The Origin and Services of the Coldstream
Guards, published in 1833, and dedicated by per-
mission to his majesty. In this work he has traced
the actions of this distinguished brigade in England
and Scotland during the wars of the Commonwealth,
Restoration, and Revolution; its services in Ireland,
in Holland, and upon the Continent; and finally in
the Peninsula, and at Waterloo; and while he has
shown a thorough acquaintanceship with the history
of these various wars, his work is pervaded through-
out not only with the high chivalrous magnanimity
of a British soldier, but the exactness of a careful
thinker, and the taste of a correct and eloquent
writer.
The rest of Colonel Mackinnon's life may be briefly
summed up, as it was one of peace and domestic
enjoyment. After he had settled in England he
married Miss Dent, the eldest daughter of Mr. Dent,
M.P. for Pool, a young lady of great attractions,
but who brought him no family. With her he led a
happy and retired life, surrounded by the society
of those who loved him; and cheered, as we may
well think, by those studies which he turned to such
an honourable account. It was thought that, from
his strong robust frame and healthy constitution, he
would have survived to a good old age; but the
sedentary life to which his wound confined him,
proved too much for a system so dependent upon
active and exciting exercise. After having scarcely
ever felt a day's illness, he died at Hertford Street,
May Fair, London, on the 22d of June, 1836, being
only forty-six years old.
MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES, a distinguished his-
torian and statesman, was born on the 24th of Oc-
tober, 1765, at Alldowrie, the residence of his grand-
mother, situated on the banks of Loch Ness, about
seven miles from Inverness. He was in his own
person, being the eldest of three children, the repre-
sentative of the Killochy branch of the family of
Mackintosh (a property which they acquired in the
fifteenth century), and was the eleventh in descent from
Allan, third son of Malcolm, the tenth chief of the
clan, who was one of the leaders in the celebrated
battle of Harlaw, fought in 1411. The lairds of
Killochy, as the eldest branch of the Mackintoshes
extant, were always captains of the watch (a feudal
military appointment) to the chief of the clan, and
acted in this capacity in all the hostilities in which
he happened to be engaged.
John Mackintosh of Killochy, father to the sub-
ject of this memoir, held a commission for several
years in Campbell's Highlanders, and was wounded
in the Seven Years' war in Germany. He was
afterwards a captain in the 68th regiment, and served
with this corps for a considerable time in Gibraltar
and other places abroad. He was a man of amiable
manners and disposition, and much esteemed by all
who knew him. Sir James' mother, Marjory Mac-
gilivray, who died at Gibraltar while he was yet a
child, was a daughter of Alexander Macgilivray,
Esq., of the state of Carolina.
From a very early period of life Sir James dis-
covered a singular propensity to reading—a passion
which his father, who had been himself accustomed
to an active life, and who desired that his son's pur-
suits should be of a more stirring kind, endeavoured,
but in vain, to subdue. Little foreseeing the emin-
ence to which this studious disposition was one day
to raise him, he twitted the boy with his sedentary
and monotonous life; telling him, with the view of
rousing him to an interest in what was passing around
him, that he would become a mere pedant. His at-
tachment to books, however, was too deeply seated
in his nature to be removed by such sarcasms, and
his father's opposition had the effect only of driving
him to do that by stealth which he had done before
openly. He rose at midnight when the family had
retired to rest, lighted his candle, and pursued his
solitary studies unmolested till the approach of morn-
ing.
In consequence of his father's being much abroad,
the care of young Mackintosh devolved chiefly upon
his grandmother—a woman of superior endowments,
and to whom he was in a great measure indebted for
his early mental discipline. When of sufficient age
to leave home, the future historian and statesman
was sent to the academy of Fortrose, then the most
distinguished seminary in that part of Scotland, and
placed under the tuition of Mr. Stalker, one of the
masters. Here young Mackintosh rapidly acquired
a marked superiority over all his schoolfellows, and his
future fame was shadowed forth in a local reputation
which gave to "Jamie Mackintosh" the character of
a prodigy of learning and talent. His master enter-
tained a similar opinion of him, and, as a proof, de-
volved upon him, while yet a mere boy, nearly the
entire management of the classical department of the
school. At this period too he began to discover that
talent for oratory and declamation by which he so
eminently distinguished himself in after-life. The
eloquence, however, on which latterly "listening
senates hung" was at this period poured out from the
top of the grave-stones in the churchyard of Fortrose,
on which the young orator used to mount in moments
of enthusiasm, and declaim from Shakspeare and Mil-
ton to a wondering, gaping, and admiring audience
of his schoolfellows. The political opinions which
distinguished Mr. Mackintosh throughout his life
were also very early formed. He was said by a
lady, a relative of his own, to have been "born a
Whig," but he certainly was not this by inheritance,
for his friends and connections were all stanch Tories
and Jacobites, and they did not view without regret
and sorrow the apostasy of this scion of the house of